What The . . . ?

Question: What do you do on a Saturday night at 8 o'clock when you've just put a pie in the oven and you shut the oven door, but the door springs back open one full inch and will not stay shut unless an inordinate amount of pressure is put on it?

Answer:

Truth to tell, this was not a mysterious happenstance that came out of nowhere. It's the third time it's happened.

I love this little, plain, economy model four-burner gas range I've had for twelve years. It has but one weird trait. Periodically, the two, big, strong hinges on either side of the door have a flare-up of arthritis or bursitis or maybe frozen rotator cuff. This ailment starts out with just a little creaky-crankiness in one hinge or the other. Gradually over weeks it gets worse and worse to the point that it sometimes takes me a good while to coax the door open. Coax may be too gentle a word. Picture me pulling on the handle in a stance that would do a tug-of-war champion proud.

Tonight I obviously put too much torque on something . . . and although I got the door open, the left hand hinge is now deranged. (Ha-ha-ho-ho, oh, that was a good one. I crack myself up.)

After the second time dear husband had to replace the hinges, he immediately ordered another set to have on hand. As he said tonight after he took a flashlight and went out back to the spare lumber pile to find a 2 x 4, brought it into the garage and cut it to length, "I should have replaced the hinges as soon as we started having this trouble again.”

I'm just happy this small emergency didn't occur while I was trying to cook, say, Thanksgiving dinner. Tonight I simply left the kitchen, and came back here to my desk to write this blog entry. If it had been Thanksgiving, I would have had a heck of a time going over or under the 2 x 4 to continue getting the dinner ready on time . . . and someone would no doubt have snapped a couple pictures of me that would look a lot stranger than this one.